


and when we burst (start over, oh darling)

by copperiisulfate



Series: blood for blood [1]
Category: Durarara!!
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, M/M, Post-Series, Suicidal Thoughts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-23
Updated: 2016-07-23
Packaged: 2018-07-26 05:10:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,496
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7561681
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/copperiisulfate/pseuds/copperiisulfate
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Tell me a story,” Masaomi says.</p>
<p>And so, the story goes.</p>
            </blockquote>





	and when we burst (start over, oh darling)

**Author's Note:**

> spoilers for the end of the series; title from the song 'begin again' by purity ring; warning for talk of violence and suicide (in the vein of canon)

 

**i.**

The futons are all laid out and Masaomi's fiddling around with a flashlight-keychain he got a hold of somehow, shining it in Mikado's eyes every once in a while when he's not lighting it under his own chin for dramatic effect.

“Tell me a story,” Masaomi says.

Mikado panics, says, “I don't even know any good ones!”

“Make one up,” Masaomi insists.

“B-but Masaomi--” Mikado doesn't know how to say that Masaomi always has the good ones and always knows how to tell them and Mikado always stutters and stumbles through telling anything remotely exciting anyway.

“Come on,” Kida prods his shin with a socked foot. “Even better if you make it scary!”

“But then we won't be able to sleep, silly!” Mikado tries to desperately cling to reason. What he means is that _he_ won't be able to sleep seeing as the universe is unfair and Masaomi is hardly afraid _ever_.

“You'll be fine,” Masaomi chirps. “I'll beat up all the big bad monsters that come after you,” he says this as if they've gone over this a hundred times. They may very possibly have, but the terror of scary stories is just as fresh and nervewracking to Mikado every time.

Mikado eventually compromises by reading out loud from a book of stories about monsters a relative had given him as Masaomi provides spotty intermittent lighting. Eventually, it devolves into Masaomi howling and growling and imitating the characters while Mikado laughs and laughs and tries to swat at him and they exhaust themselves to sleep.

 

 

 

 

 

 

**ii.**

“So~! Tell me some stories,” Masaomi says, when they meet again after years. “How's Saitama been? Any girls from elementary get cute? Anyone ask about me?”

Mikado laughs almost instinctively. Half of what Masaomi says isn’t even all that funny but this has possibly become some sort of conditioned reaction from all the ridiculous nonsense he's said over the years. And then there are the mannerisms, ridiculous and endearing and always managing to disarm everything and dissolve it into humour

( _Fine. I don't know. Yes, at first, but then they moved on_ \-- would be the respective answers. He doesn't say that he doesn’t know how he personally could never manage that last one. Well, he does. It both helped and hindered that they'd stayed in touch despite Masaomi not being there in the flesh. Mikado had passed on local happenings through their chats and Masaomi had told him stories in turn, always much more picturesque and glamorous than small-town gossip, spectacular and glittery at the edges and seemingly larger than life.

“Do you ever miss it?” Mikado asks.

“Saitama? It was kind of a small-time place, not much going on other than big bugs and tiny brats in the parks and, you know, my folks were whatever. _Still_ ,” he says, making a sweeping recovery, gazing with both fondness and longing up at a point beyond the skyscrapers, beyond the light pollution, at the blue-violet sky. “I missed seeing the stars and it’s hard to get a good look from around here. Also, you.”

“Such an afterthought,” Mikado chides.

“Best for last,” Masaomi counters with a wink. “But for real,” he raps a knuckle against Mikado's shoulder, and there’s a change in his timbre, a warning that Mikado will not catch but will be haunted by for months and years later. “I'm glad you're around again. We always knew how to have the best time.”

He pushes off the edge of the fountain in the town square and ambles on ahead, walking backwards, facing Mikado, narrating another detail about another encounter he'd had at This Very Street Corner, _would you even believe it??_

 

 

 

 

 

 

**iii.**

“Let me tell you a story,” Celty says. “This city is steeped in blood. Blood begets blood. And it's always hungry, Mikado. It's always looking for its next meal. A lot of people learn this the hard way.”

“Why do you stay here?” he'd asked her, shaking and shaking, his sleeves stiff from his best friend's drying blood.

“I came here looking for something then I found something else, someone else along the way. It was an accidental detour but now I’m bound and cannot leave.”

_We’re not so different in that, you and I,_ he thinks. “Are you saying I should leave?”

“I'm telling you that if he makes it through this then he might. And maybe you should let him.”

Even now, Mikado doesn't know if he'd ever fully wrapped his head around this. In the moment though, he'd felt his stomach drop. “For how long?”

“However long it takes. Maybe forever, if that's what's best.”

And after the fear came anger, leaving him shaking for different reasons altogether. _What if I don't want what's best,_ he thinks. _What if I just want what I want?_

Besides, this city was full of hypocrites. What did it matter if it added one more to the collection?

_What if I just want it to be the way it was and if I told you I knew that I could do it? What if I showed everyone that I could do it?_

_What I want is simple._

“Thank you, Celty-san,” he says politely.

_Don’t you know that I am now bound here too?_

 

 

 

 

 

 

**iv.**

“Let me tell you a story,” Orihara Izaya tells him, not under the guise of Masaomi's screen name but as himself with his slippery grin plastered on his slippery face.

“What if there was someone who was willing to sacrifice it all, their pride, their efforts, all the light and innocence in their soul, maybe even their life, all to spare a friend from darkness. Say it was hypothetical. Say it was real. Say it was all for you. Humanity is kind of adorable that way, isn't it? What would you do, oh Great Leader of the Dollars? What would you do? _What would you do?”_

If he was in front of a computer screen, Mikado's not entirely sure he wouldn't have ran his fist through it.

He didn't have time or patience for riddles and, in his heart of hearts, he knows, of course.

Izaya's not bluffing and Mikado can feel it. Still, it changes nothing.

He wants what he wants and what he wants is simple.

He'll show Masaomi the way, show him how simple it is, show him that he doesn’t have to run or hide anymore. They can be together again and be themselves again and be invincible and untouchable, but only when it's the right time.

Any sooner and it will all be ruined.

And he cannot risk anyone ruining it, not something this important, not when he has fought so hard and come so far for it, not even Masaomi himself.

 

 

 

 

 

 

**v.**

“Tell me a story,” Masaomi says from his position in a chair next to the hospital bed.

And Mikado looks at him, bandaged and bruised and largely dumbfounded.

“Tell me about a kid I used to know,” says Masaomi. There’s an old ache in his voice but, for all of that, he still sounds like he's somewhere else, far away. “Something happened to him along the way.”

“I-I don't know,” Mikado's voice is hoarse. “I was never all that good with stories. That was always you.”

“Yeah,” Masaomi says, casual now. “I remember he used to say shit like that but it's been a while. We became strangers at some point. I’d like to meet him again.”

Mikado barks a laugh, which turns into a cough. “No, you wouldn't.”

“Yeah, I do,” Masaomi says, exasperated. “You don't get to tell me what I want or decide this on your own. Not anymore.”

Mikado doesn't even attempt to have a retort to that. It’s thoroughly deserved, all of it, or at least everything except Masaomi's easy forgiveness.

“Look,” Masaomi sighs. “I didn't mean--I'm tired, yeah?”

“How's your girlfriend?” Mikado asks, mostly to change the topic and maybe, a little subconsciously, to be difficult. The irony of Masaomi loitering in hospital rooms of those who have haunted his conscience in one way or another isn't lost on either of them.

“She's fine. Wanted to say hello but didn't think it was the right place or time.”

“When will it be?” Mikado says to the ceiling, no inflection in his voice.

“That really what you wanna talk about? Well, _I don't know, Mikado_ ,” he says, with a bite in it. “Figured we should get our shit together first.”

Mikado closes his eyes, willing this to end, everything, all over again possibly. He hasn’t been awake that long. In that time, the moments where he regrets failing on the rooftop are fewer and farther between but still there and generally amplified by the guilt that more often than not accompanies Masaomi’s presence. “What's there to get together?”

“If you wanted to cut me out altogether there were better ways to do it.”

Mikado runs a hand over his face. Everything’s still swimming a little at the edges of his memory and even his vision, a hint of a fog he can't shake out. He remembers everything with much more clarity than he did when he first woke up. 

Everyone had been far too relieved to give him a piece of their mind when he'd just woken up, no matter how much or how long he’d had it coming.

Anri had been around here and there, chosen to give him space after her initial burst of warmth.

Masaomi had been around every day, turned irritable and angry after that first day, like he'd gotten over his relief only to have the rest of what had happened slowly start to sink in. Mikado didn't blame him for or pretend to misunderstand any of it. It was all well earned. He just wishes he had the right things to say or to do to put it back together when, in reality, he had nothing at all.

“It wasn't about cutting you out,” Mikado says, thinks, _I could never make it make sense._

“That right? Because I still can't figure out what it is that you wanted.”

Another sharp laugh leaves Mikado's throat in spite of himself.

“To bring you back, at first. It seemed so simple, you know? And then, I wanted more and more _and more_. And when nothing felt like enough-- _humanity didn’t feel enough_ \--it was even simpler after that. I had to kill the monster, put an end to the nightmare,” he says. “It’s all that was left and there was no coming back.”

“There is _always_ coming back,” and Masaomi nearly snarls.

“I think you should go ahead with your life," Mikado says earnestly. "I don't think I can fix it, any of it anymore."

“You can and you will," and Masaomi's voice is raw and bordering on dangerous, the way Mikado had heard rumours of but never met firsthand. "And you're going to start now.”

Still, Mikado wants to laugh again, bitter and incredulous, but forces it to stay down. “And where do I start?”

“By staying _alive._ ”

“And that’ll be enough?”

“For starters,” Masaomi says, and he leaves the room before he can look him in the eye.

 

*

 

“You were always at your happiest when you were with him,” says Anri that night. “And I don’t like it when you fight. I just want us all to be together again.” She doesn’t say, _like it used to be,_ because they all know that nothing is ever going to go back to being the way it used to be. “Isn’t that what you all fought so hard and bled so much for?”

Mikado looks at her and doesn’t know what to say, doesn’t know how she is still in his life. He doesn’t deserve her. He doesn’t deserve any of them. They all must know this.

He wants to ask: _how do I do learn to deserve it again?_ But that implies that he must have in the first place.

He knows what all her gentle nonsensical answers will be, knows all the variations on forgiveness. She thinks of herself as culpable, as less than human, and thinks that makes it easier for them to understand each other. It doesn’t. She’s got a good heart. Mikado doesn’t even know what that _means_ anymore. He’s a parody of flesh and blood and bones, acting at human now, more faking it than making it, hoping that maybe he can one day make it or at least the faith his friends have in whatever’s left of his soul can will him back to humanity. He hardly can even remember the language, feels like a lost foreign tongue to him now. 

Masaomi’s words still ring in his head. _I still can’t figure out what it is that you wanted._

It was so simple. Why couldn’t they understand it? 

_To die._

But he can’t settle for that, can he? It would be too easy and he doesn’t deserve easy.

There is penance in guilt, or so he likes to think. He doesn’t know why they can’t seem to understand that he's been the monster at the end of the book all along.

 

*

 

Masaomi returns the next day. He's bought cookies from the bakery three blocks down where they used to loiter so, so long ago. He seems to have left his edge back home today, wherever that happens to be these days.

“Sorry,” he says, putting the box on the side table. “I lost it yesterday”.

Mikado smiles. “That was relatively mild, all things considered.”

“Meant what I said though, about you making it up, sticking around, with me, for me. Among all the shit I needed to say and was too upset to was that _I missed you for a long goddamn time_ , you know?”

“Masaomi--” and when Masaomi cocks his head, Mikado continues. “I don't know how to do it anymore. Be him. The guy you miss. The guy you were friends with."

"I suppose it’s unfair of me, isn’t it? Expecting you to stay the same when I didn’t, when I became a runaway coward myself.”

“You were always the braver one. You always protected--”

“Except for when it mattered,” Masaomi cuts him off with a sharp laugh. “Never when it mattered. Left all the dirty work for you. Came back and still couldn’t do it or face you for the longest time. How did you like that version of me? I never asked you either.”

“Look, I don’t care about that,” Mikado says. "I never cared about any of that.”

“You wanted to give me the city back, no matter how unworthy I was of it. Isn’t that right?”

“Masaomi--”

“Then why is it so hard for you to believe that I don’t care either, not about any of it, that I just want you around again.”

Mikado laughs, hollow, weary. “I just don’t know how to make that happen. And even if it happens, I don’t know when.”

"I’m in no rush,” says Masaomi, kicking his feet up on the hospital bed and grinning the way he did a decade ago, like Mikado didn’t just try to kill the both of them some time ago, like he has all the time in the world.

 

 

 

 

 

 

**vi.**

“Tell me a story,” Mikado says one night, close to his ear. He’s on his side, facing Masaomi as Masaomi looks up, up, up at the starry Saitama sky. Once Mikado had been discharged from the hospital, neither of them could explain it, but it had just made sense to leave the city and everything it carried for some time.

Here, there’s the slightly spring-damp grass at their backs, the rustling of a breeze through the leaves, the sound of cicadas buzzing in the air and the whistles of the wind. 

Here, he doesn't feel like a monster, feels closer to human than he has in ages, feels like a child, looking out his bedroom window at stars and fireflies and Masaomi and his floppy hat and adventure of the day beckoning him. He feels (finally, somewhat, again) like half of the Mikado-and-Masaomi gestalt they'd once been. 

And Anri was right, always right, because he cannot remember ever being better than when he was that.

“Once upon a time, there were two friends, two peas in a pod, two kids in a town,” Kida starts softly. “One of them left, went to the city, missed his friend every single day. Eventually, he lured him into the city, only to leave it later himself. Still, he didn’t know how to be himself without, and so he came back.”

Mikado sighs, says, his voice small, “A happy story, Masaomi.”

“ _Hey!_ You don’t get to interrupt my story. Besides, it’s not done yet. Be patient. Anyway, things changed when he returned. The city was different and they were different but the one thing that never changed was that they were two kids who wanted little more than for things to go back to the way they were."

And here, Mikado swallows, can’t bring his sinking heart to hope but asks regardless, “And does it have a happy ending?”

“Don’t know; it’s still going,” Masaomi sighs at the stars. “But I kinda hope so.”

“Sorry, sorry,” Mikado chuckles, humors him. “I’m no good with listening.”

“Maybe you just met your quota for my silly stories.”

“No way,” says Mikado in a hush, drawing closer. His forehead is nearly touching Masaomi’s shoulder but not quite. Here, it's almost easy to pretend that nothing had ever happened, ever changed, so dangerously easy to cast aside all the blood and the guilt and the wars as a figment of their imaginations, a story to happen to someone else. “ _Not ever_ ,” Mikado repeats, his voice small and failing him. He finds that he means it down to his bones and feels suddenly like he might cry. 

“I’ve loved you forever,” Masaomi says, still looking at the sky, not meeting his eyes. “Did you know? Because I didn’t for a while. Deep down, maybe, but not at the surface, not fully, not until I came back that day and saw you in tears and I couldn’t move and I couldn’t breathe.”

Mikado does push his face against Masaomi’s shoulder now, if only in attempt to keep himself together but to no avail. “But what about--”

“Saki and Anri and all the other people I’ve ever loved? I don’t know. It’s there, sure. It will always be there. It’s different though. Everyone already knows this. We were possibly the last.”

Masaomi turns towards him now, and gathers him in with an arm around him, fingers resting at the crown of Mikado’s head, tucking him close below his chin as Mikado heaves and shudders and chokes down a sob. 

"I don’t want anything from you,” Masaomi tells him. “I just needed you to know before it ate me up inside.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

**vii.**

There’s a night, a year or so after, and they’re back in Ikebukuro and on top of the roof of a different building, looking out at the city below.

He’s not quite better, still not quite all there again, might never really be.

Masaomi walks beside him, keeps saying things about works in progress and keeps trying at more optimism that either of their hearts can really handle at any given time.

Masaomi also still has a bit of a limp and though he hides it well for the most part, it’s burned into Mikado brain right along with the surgical scar over his knee, and so of course he can never miss it.

Mikado also knows that Masaomi's not being facetious or giving lip service, is aiming for sincerity and lending both his hands if not his whole heart to fix everything he might never be able to. Mikado’s never certain how much of the fixing will truly occur even though he too has been trying ( _and trying_ ) in his own small ways. Mostly, he does what Masaomi asked of him, continues to ask of him, even if it is sometimes the hardest thing. He tries to stay alive. 

“Tell me a story,” Masaomi says. “Make it up as you go.”

And Mikado turns towards him. He turns his back to the city and all of its monsters and mysteries and curving shadows and blinding lights and kisses him. He can feel Masaomi shudder then breathe into it, deepen it to the point where there’s not much left of his breath, not much left of anything at all except the culmination of this thing that they’ve been building and breaking and building from the wreckage of the breaking _over and over again._

He keeps telling Masaomi directly and indirectly and largely in vain, in the face of Masaomi scoffing, to invest his time and energy elsewhere where he will have better outcomes, better endings. 

Often, even still, he keeps insisting that this story is going to end in tragedy, but then, remembers vividly that he’s been wrong before.

 

**Author's Note:**

> this isn't exactly the 50k post-series fixit i had wanted to read or write for them but it's something


End file.
